The Rental (2020)
Two couples - four profoundly unlikeable and entitled individuals - rent a large oceanside home in the middle of nowhere where they spend most of the film being unlikeable and entitled before getting what's coming to them.
The slow burning, character driven plot would have been more attractive were it not
these characters, each uglier than the last. Most unlikeable is the aggressive and confrontational drama queen with the permanent chip on her shoulder. The two "nicest" characters are the violent reformed con who resembles an attractive version of Martin Platt from
Corrie; and the woman who is fine with stealing another woman's man (because she's "nice" and
says she feels badly about it) but becomes insecure and angsty when she realises the woman she'd stolen her husband from had previously stolen him from someone else.
The first two thirds are kind of an American
Hollyoaks After Hours Goes On Holiday direct to video kind of thing (the "natural" type acting reminded me a little of
This Life, but that comparison would be a little overgenerous).
Then it becomes a by-the-numbers version of pretty much every well-known slasher film. There's the "spooky person looking down from the air vents" of
Black Christmas; the "terrible accident" and "nobody ever needs to know" and "this is wrong" of
Prom Night or
I Know What You Did Last Summer; the "stalker sends victims media of secret recordings " from
Scream.
More than anything else, this is clearly heavily influenced by John Carpenter's original
Halloween. It's nicely shot with a lot of darkness and shadows, with the pale-faced masked killer remaining mostly hidden. Indeed, there's one moment where he lurches out of a cupboard just as Michael Myers did.
As horrors go the "less is more" approach - with the emphasis on atmosphere and suspense - is my kind of thing. But the deeply unlikeable characters also made it a difficult watch for all the wrong reasons.
